From today's editorial:
The housing bubble is at the heart of Britain's economic crisis. For one happy generation, rapid house-price inflation fuelled by ready money and a shrinking supply was a guarantee of previously unimagined riches. By the peak of the boom in 2007, 75% of us owned our own homes.
For the lucky ones who got in early it was an investment that doubled in value and delivered a promise of lifelong security. No government will lightly wake the voters from such a dream, and on the evidence of Monday's housing strategy, the coalition is determined to persist in the deceit that we can return to the heady days of a decade ago.
I don't remember them saying this as loudly when Labour were in charge, but hey. Better late than never.
What have we wrought in the UK?
5 hours ago
12 comments:
"look, we do get it, well sometimes, nearly, almost, honestly; the trouble is...we just can't drop the habit of publishing pieces which portray the exact opposite ... and actually a lot of us here are still wedded to the idea of houses as investments and we just can't get our heads around the idea that a taxpayer subsidy to housebuyers, however it is dressed up, results in house prices rising and not falling ..."
Good too.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-whats-lost-demise-euro-only-what-was-unsustainable
AC1
Anon, sure, the Guardian newspaper is as hypocritical as the rest of them, it's just that they run anti-Home-Owner-Ist articles more often that the others.
AC1, that's one way of explaining it.
Talking of which ,(anti-homeownerist articles), there is a short Analysis by Phillip Inman on page 9 of Monday's Guardian which is pretty startling.Larry Elliott
on page 22 recommending Steve Keen's ideas for distributing Fiat money is also pretty good though not to everybody's taste perhaps.
Not wanting to promote the Guardian further but Larry Elliot did another anti-homeownerist piece today:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/economics-blog/2011/nov/22/bank-of-england-owner-occupation
The Guardian is also one of the few places in mainstream media where LVT has appeared in a positive light.
DBC, more examples, about ten years too late.
QP, that's a fine article. More private renting (combined with high rates of tax on rental income) is one way of doing things. But a large part of the reason why owner-occupation rose so quickly in the UK in the 50s and 60s is because of the high taxation of rental income, actual or notional.
And as an LVTer, I must say that the simple fact is that shifting to LVT would lead to more owner-occupation and less private renting. Ho hum.
"And as an LVTer, I must say that the simple fact is that shifting to LVT would lead to more owner-occupation and less private renting. Ho hum."
Why would that be? I would have thought that increasing the cost of owning would make renting more attractive, plus there would be much less capital gain to be made from owning. I suppose it would boil down to interest rates: when they are high, renting property would be cheaper, when they are low, renting money would be cheaper.
B, everybody has to live somewhere, but nobody has to be a landlord.
With LVT, the attractions of (i.e. subsidies to) 'owning' as much land as possible would decrease, people would sell their BTLs, second homes, tart up derelict homes etc, and the people who buy them would primarily be those who are currently renting.
Larry Elliott's rather pokey out- of-the-way piece in Business Briefing on page 29 of today's Guardian is pretty much an anti-Homeownerist tour de force.
Yup
The Robin Smith Institute - Real Reform: Occupiers, I am your worst nightmare
Mark, agreed that currently the balance is tipped towards owning land and being a landlord, but there are attractions to renting, like it being much easier to move house for starters and, so long as you are not being financially penalised for renting, as you currently are, then people will want to rent. It's only a result of the Home-Ownerist propaganda that most tenants are frustrated owner-occupiers.
B: "there are attractions to renting, like it being much easier to move house for starters"
Putting all the financial aspects aside, having moved home three times in the last four years (from owned to rented, and from rented to rented) and three times in three years in the early 90s (from rented to owned and from owned to owned), I can only say that moving home is a few days hassle packing and unpacking boxes, but apart from that it's no big deal and it doesn't make much difference.
For example, as a tenant, you are locked into 6 or 12 month tenancies but as a homeowner you can sell any time you like. The real bummer is not being able to decorate the place the way you like it (unlike Germany, where the tenant can decorate how he likes and usually does).
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